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Write your own LoR


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Hi all.

I'm new here and could use some help. I recently hit up my mentor for an LoR, and he - unexpectedly - asked me to send him a rough draft of the letter. In other words, he told me to write my own recommendation.

Personally, I'd like to just write myself a John Forbes Nash-type letter (which in case you don't know, is one line long: "This man is a genius"). Of course, this is the real world, and I'm afraid I can't get off the hook quite so easily.

So what do I write? I've absolutely no idea.

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This would be a nightmare for me. The most repeated criticism I received for my Statement of Purpose was that I didn't brag enough. I can't imagine having to write a letter that is supposed to be bragging about myself. I'd find another recommender, but that's just me.

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Someone requested that of me, too and I decided not to use them. To me it was essentially him saying he had no idea who I was or what I was capable of -- not a good sign. Since he was a back-up anyway I just let it go. I really do think it is lazy, though. If you can't or don't want to write the letter then say so. There is no way I can bring myself to talk about my excellent approach to anthropological inquiry or whatever with a straight face and I'm a pretty solid writer. Bleh.

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Hi all.

I'm new here and could use some help. I recently hit up my mentor for an LoR, and he - unexpectedly - asked me to send him a rough draft of the letter. In other words, he told me to write my own recommendation.

Personally, I'd like to just write myself a John Forbes Nash-type letter (which in case you don't know, is one line long: "This man is a genius"). Of course, this is the real world, and I'm afraid I can't get off the hook quite so easily.

So what do I write? I've absolutely no idea.

I hear this isn't all that unusual. Luckily, there are a lot more resources for writing letters of recommendation than there are for other stages of the application process.

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself why you asked this guy to be a recommender. What can he talk about? Your research? Your character? Your presentations? Your writing? Make a list of all of the things that you were hoping he'd talk about when you asked him.

Then, Google academic letters of recommendation. Get an idea of the usual format, and the tropes of the trade. If you have the Donald Asher book, there's a whole section back there on how to write letters of rec. Then write a basic version of it, including all of the things you listed. Then, you're done.

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One of my references pulled a similar scenario. What solution: I looked at another recommendation letter that a reference had sent to me for review (ie. he was asking if I thought he should be boasting about anything else). After getting the idea of how he wrote it, I more or less changed the writing style, facts and accolades and passed it over to the reference for review. He thought it looked great.

Keep in mind, you MUST give yourself a pat on the back. I've had a reference that sent a letter exactly like I gave it to him without adding anything in. So DON'T be modest. Fact is, if your reference doesn't agree with you on a statement he/she will confront you about it, which gives you an opportunity to justify why I included said statement.

My pointers:

- Keep it factual

- Make yourself look like an applicant that you would want to admit if you were in the admissions committee.

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you can start by making a list of points that the letter should include such as research experience with that professor. Then ask a friend to write a paragraph long "recommendation" for you. The paragraph will provide an outside perspective, phrases that you might use and also make you feel less like you're just blowing steam.

pick what you want to include and frame it into a academic LoR format and you're set.

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I'm putting the finishing touches on writing a letter of recommendation on behalf of one of my recommenders and am not too worried about it. He's a busy, high-level manager, family man, and his job requires frequent travel. He's very busy, so I totally understand. He wasn't my immediate supervisor at work, but we worked closely on a couple of projects and with LoR, the higher and more senior the recommender is the better.

One thing I did at the beginning was in my email requesting the letter, I was very polite, reminded him of some stuff we worked on and tried to make it clear that he could level with me if he didn't feel confident writing me a "strong" letter of rec. Be up front.

It's kind of fun though, while I wasn't exactly an superstar at this job, I just tried to think of some areas that shined through in my work and how I could present them to compensate for some weaknesses in my app (so, since I had a low GPA I said something like: "Carpe is a diligent worker and I was impressed by his work ethic and I'm sure he can handle any top schools bla bla bla").

He's going to edit it, so I didn't go overboard.

Anyways, this type of thing is not uncommon, so don't stress about it, take advantage of it to say some things other recommenders might miss.

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